Understanding the Warning Process Through the Lens of Practice: Emancipation as a Condition of Action–Some Lessons from France - Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems for Climate Change - page 223

on their personal position, on the institutional/territorial/historical context etc.
and on the actual situation on the ground (Créton-Cazanave 2010 ). The action
environments of the actors are therefore much more extensive and varied than
has been theoretically assumed

More, in the interviews many actors emphasise the fact that it is getting 'worse
and worse': the quantity of 'things' they have to take into account increases year
by year. In other words, the AEs are becoming broader and more complex. This
'proliferation' of the entities to be included in AEs during the WPs is a fi nding that
raises numerous questions. Because if the quantity of entities that the actors must
take into account is increasing - or if their AEs are expanding - the process of
sense-making for action is particularly diffi cult, in particular the closure of the
assessment phase.

.

12.3.2 Causes and Consequences of the Proliferation

In order to identify the problems that result, let us look at the sources of this
proliferation of entities.

12.3.2.1 Sources of Proliferation

Several processes contribute to this expansion of the action environments (AEs):
First, in our complex societies, the phenomenon of urban concentration is
characterised by a twofold process of concentration and diversifi cation of the
'things' present (activities, goods, individuals, biophysical phenomena, fl ows, etc.)
(e.g. Lussault 2007 ). This general trend means that, even at small town scale, the
quantity of 'things' to be managed in an area is constantly increasing.
Next, we are seeing a combined development (1) of rising social demand for
security and (2) of government injunctions to protect populations, goods and
economic activities. The operational players are therefore under a dual obligation,
which widens the scope of their prerogatives. For example, the reform of the fl ood
forecasting services has reduced the number of teams, while expanding their cover-
age (from department to region). In addition, since there has been a shift in their role
from 'announcing' to 'forecasting' fl oods, they have had to adopt new tools, new
data, new spatio-temporal scales.
Scientifi c advances that enhance our understanding of weather phenomena also
lead to the constant addition of new elements to the assessment process. Indeed, the
more we know about a phenomenon and the more we can monitor, the more things
(entities) the actors are expected to include in their assessment of the situation and
in the action process. Likewise, through technical development, particularly in tele-
communications, we can acquire a great deal of information on the state of the
atmosphere (for example), continuously and in real time (atmospheric sensors, etc.).
This means that more and more entities can be included in the AEs, covering an ever
larger scale. In fact, these tools allow a planetary scale global environment to be